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The global energy balance as represented in CMIP6 climate models

A plausible simulation of the global energy balance is a first-order requirement for a credible climate model. Here I investigate the representation of the global energy balance in 40 state-of-the-art global climate models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6). I...

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Autor principal: Wild, Martin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7366598/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32704207
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05282-7
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author Wild, Martin
author_facet Wild, Martin
author_sort Wild, Martin
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description A plausible simulation of the global energy balance is a first-order requirement for a credible climate model. Here I investigate the representation of the global energy balance in 40 state-of-the-art global climate models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6). In the CMIP6 multi-model mean, the magnitudes of the energy balance components are often in better agreement with recent reference estimates compared to earlier model generations on a global mean basis. However, the inter-model spread in the representation of many of the components remains substantial, often on the order of 10–20 Wm(−2) globally, except for aspects of the shortwave clear-sky budgets, which are now more consistently simulated by the CMIP6 models. The substantial inter-model spread in the simulated global mean latent heat fluxes in the CMIP6 models, exceeding 20% (18 Wm(−2)), further implies also large discrepancies in their representation of the global water balance. From a historic perspective of model development over the past decades, the largest adjustments in the magnitudes of the simulated present-day global mean energy balance components occurred in the shortwave atmospheric clear-sky absorption and the surface downward longwave radiation. Both components were gradually adjusted upwards over several model generations, on the order of 10 Wm(−2), to reach 73 and 344 Wm(−2), respectively in the CMIP6 multi-model means. Thereby, CMIP6 has become the first model generation that largely remediates long-standing model deficiencies related to an overestimation in surface downward shortwave and compensational underestimation in downward longwave radiation in its multi-model mean.
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spelling pubmed-73665982020-07-21 The global energy balance as represented in CMIP6 climate models Wild, Martin Clim Dyn Article A plausible simulation of the global energy balance is a first-order requirement for a credible climate model. Here I investigate the representation of the global energy balance in 40 state-of-the-art global climate models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6). In the CMIP6 multi-model mean, the magnitudes of the energy balance components are often in better agreement with recent reference estimates compared to earlier model generations on a global mean basis. However, the inter-model spread in the representation of many of the components remains substantial, often on the order of 10–20 Wm(−2) globally, except for aspects of the shortwave clear-sky budgets, which are now more consistently simulated by the CMIP6 models. The substantial inter-model spread in the simulated global mean latent heat fluxes in the CMIP6 models, exceeding 20% (18 Wm(−2)), further implies also large discrepancies in their representation of the global water balance. From a historic perspective of model development over the past decades, the largest adjustments in the magnitudes of the simulated present-day global mean energy balance components occurred in the shortwave atmospheric clear-sky absorption and the surface downward longwave radiation. Both components were gradually adjusted upwards over several model generations, on the order of 10 Wm(−2), to reach 73 and 344 Wm(−2), respectively in the CMIP6 multi-model means. Thereby, CMIP6 has become the first model generation that largely remediates long-standing model deficiencies related to an overestimation in surface downward shortwave and compensational underestimation in downward longwave radiation in its multi-model mean. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2020-05-25 2020 /pmc/articles/PMC7366598/ /pubmed/32704207 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05282-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Wild, Martin
The global energy balance as represented in CMIP6 climate models
title The global energy balance as represented in CMIP6 climate models
title_full The global energy balance as represented in CMIP6 climate models
title_fullStr The global energy balance as represented in CMIP6 climate models
title_full_unstemmed The global energy balance as represented in CMIP6 climate models
title_short The global energy balance as represented in CMIP6 climate models
title_sort global energy balance as represented in cmip6 climate models
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7366598/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32704207
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05282-7
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